The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories

by Martin Edwards

  The manager shook his head. “And my telephone’s not working.”

  “They’ve cut the line.” Davidson raced back through the Carpet Department to the passenger elevators.

  Marston went over to where Lester was lying, with half a dozen people round him, including the thin woman. “We must get a doctor.”

  The American he had been serving said, “I am a doctor.” He was bending over Lester, whose eyes were wide open.

  “How is he?”

  The American lowered his voice. “He got it in the abdomen.”

  Lester seemed to be trying to raise himself up. The thin woman helped him. He sat up, looked around, and said, “Lucille.” Then blood suddenly rushed out of his mouth, and he sank back.

  The doctor bent over again, then looked up. “I’m very sorry. He’s dead.”

  The thin woman gave Lester a more generous obituary than he deserved. “He wasn’t a very good clerk, but he was a brave young man.”

  Straight Line, outside in the stolen Jag, waited for the policeman to move. But not a bit of it. The three men with the policeman were pointing to a particular spot on the map, and the copper was laughing; they were having some sort of stupid joke together. What the hell. Straight thought, hasn’t the bleeder got any work to do, doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to be hanging about?

  Straight looked at his watch. 10:34, coming up to 10:35—and now, as the three men finally moved away, what should happen but that a teen-age girl should come up, and the copper was bending over toward her with a look of holiday good-will.

  It’s no good, Straight thought, I shall land them right in his lap if I stay here. He pulled away from the parking space, looked again at his watch. He was obsessed by the need to get out of the policeman’s sight.

  Once round the block, he thought, just once round can’t take more than a minute, and I’ve got more than two minutes to spare. Then if the copper’s still here I’ll stay a few yards away from him with my engine running.

  He moved down Jessiter Street and a moment after Straight had gone, the policeman, who had never even glanced at him, moved away too.

  By Mr Payne’s plan they should have taken off their Santa Claus costumes in the service elevator and walked out at the bottom as the same respectable, anonymous citizens who had gone in; but as soon as they were inside the elevator Stacey said, “He hit me.” A stain showed on the scarlet right arm of his robe.

  Mr Payne pressed the button to take them down. He was proud that, in this emergency, his thoughts came with clarity and logic. He spoke them aloud.

  “No time to take these off. Anyway, they’re just as good a disguise in the street. Straight will be waiting. We step out and into the car, take them off there. Davidson shouldn’t have been back in that department for another two minutes.”

  “I gotta get to a doctor.”

  “We’ll go to Lambie’s first. He’ll fix it.” The elevator whirred downward. Almost timidly, Mr Payne broached the subject that worried him most. “What happened to Lester?”

  “He caught one.” Stacey was pale.

  The elevator stopped. Mr Payne adjusted the wig on Stacey’s head. “They can’t possibly be waiting for us, there hasn’t been time. We just walk out. Not too fast, remember. Casually, normally.”

  The elevator door opened and they walked the fifty feet to the Jessiter Street exit. They were delayed only by a small boy who rushed up to Mr Payne, clung to his legs and shouted that he wanted his Christmas present. Mr Payne gently disengaged him, whispered to his mother, “Our tea break. Back later,” and moved on.

  Now they were outside in the street. But there was no sign of Straight or the Jaguar.

  Stacey began to curse. They crossed the road from Orbin’s, stood outside Danny’s Shoe Parlour for a period that seemed to both of them endless, but was, in fact, only thirty seconds. People looked at them curiously—two Santa Clauses wearing false noses—but they did not arouse great attention. They were oddities, yes, but oddities were in keeping with the time of year and Oxford Street’s festive decorations.

  “We’ve got to get away,” Stacey said. “We’re sitting ducks.”

  “Don’t be a fool. We wouldn’t get a hundred yards.”

  “Planning,” Stacey said bitterly. “Fine bloody planning. If you ask me—”

  “Here he is.”

  The Jag drew up beside them, and in a moment they were in and down Jessiter Street, away from Orbin’s. Davidson was on the spot less than a minute later, but by the time he had found passers-by who had seen the two Santa Clauses get into the car, they were half a mile away.

  Straight Line began to explain what had happened, Stacey swore at him, and Mr Payne cut them both short.

  “No time for that. Get these clothes off, talk later.”

  “You got the rocks?”

  “Yes, but Stace has been hit. By the American detective. I don’t think it’s bad, though.”

  “Whatsisname, Lester, he okay?”

  “There was trouble. Stace caught him with a bullet.”

  Straight said nothing more. He was not one to complain about something that couldn’t be helped. His feelings showed only in the controlled savagery with which he manoeuvred the Jag.

  While Straight drove, Mr Payne was taking off his own Santa Claus outfit and helping Stacey off with his. He stuffed them, with the wigs and beards and noses, back into the suitcase. Stacey winced as the robe came over his right arm, and Mr Payne gave him a handkerchief to hold over it. At the same time he suggested that Stacey hand over the jewels, since Mr Payne would be doing the negotiating with the fence. It was a mark of the trust that both men still reposed in Mr Payne that Stacey handed them over without a word, and that Straight did not object or even comment.

  They turned into the quiet Georgian terrace where Lambie lived. “Number Fifteen, right-hand side,” Mr Payne said.

  Jim Baxter and Eddie Grain had been hanging about in the street for several minutes. Lucille had learned from Lester what car Straight was driving. They recognized the Jag immediately, and strolled toward it. They had just reached the car when it came to a stop in front of Lambie’s house. Stacey and Mr Payne got out.

  Jim and Eddie were not, after all, too experienced. They made an elementary mistake in not waiting until Straight had driven away. Jim had his flick knife out and was pointing it at Mr Payne’s stomach.

  “Come on now, Dad, give us the stuff and you won’t get hurt,” he said.

  On the other side of the car Eddie Grain, less subtle, swung at Stacey with a shortened length of bicycle chain. Stacey, hit round the head, went down, and Eddie was on top of him, kicking, punching, searching.

  Mr Payne hated violence, but he was capable of defending himself. He stepped aside, kicked upward, and knocked the knife flying from Jim’s hand. Then he rang the doorbell of Lambie’s house. At the same time Straight got out of the car and felled Eddie Grain with a vicious rabbit punch.

  During the next few minutes several things happened simultaneously. At the end of the road a police whistle was blown, loudly and insistently, by an old lady who had seen what was going on. Lambie, who also saw what was going on and wanted no part of it, told his manservant on no account to answer the doorbell or open the door.

  Stacey, kicked and beaten by Eddie Grain, drew his revolver and fired four shots. One of them struck Eddie in the chest, and another hit Jim Baxter in the leg. Eddie scuttled down the street holding his chest, turned the corner, and ran slap into the arms of two policemen hurrying to the scene.

  Straight, who did not care for shooting, got back into the Jag and drove away. He abandoned the Jag as soon as he could, and went home.

  When the police arrived, with a bleating Eddie in tow, they found Stacey and Jim Baxter on the ground, and several neighbours only too ready to tell confusing stories about the great gang fight that had just
taken place. They interrogated Lambie, of course, but he had not seen or heard anything at all.

  And Mr Payne? With a general melee taking place, and Lambie clearly not intending to answer his doorbell, he had walked away down the road. When he turned the corner he found a cab, which he took to within a couple of hundred yards of his shop. Then, an anonymous man carrying a shabby suitcase, he went in through the little side entrance.

  Things had gone badly, he reflected as he again became Mr Rossiter Payne the antiquarian bookseller, mistakes had been made. But happily they were not his mistakes. The jewels would be hot, no doubt; they would have to be kept for a while, but all was not lost.

  Stace and Straight were professionals—they would never talk. And although Mr Payne did not, of course, know that Lester was dead, he realized that the young man would be able to pose as a wounded hero and was not likely to be subjected to severe questioning.

  So Mr Payne was whistling There’s a Silver Lining as he went down to greet Miss Oliphant.

  “Oh, Mr Payne,” she trilled. “You’re back before you said. It’s not half past eleven.”

  Could that be true? Yes, it was.

  “Did the American collector—I mean, will you be able to sell him the manuscripts?”

  “I hope so. Negotiations are proceeding, Miss Oliphant. They may take some time, but I hope they will reach a successful conclusion.”

  The time passed uneventfully until 2:30, in the afternoon when Miss Oliphant entered his little private office. “Mr Payne, there are two gentlemen to see you. They won’t say what it’s about, but they look—well, rather funny.”

  As soon as Mr Payne saw them and even before they produced their warrant cards, he knew that there was nothing funny about them. He took them up to the flat and tried to talk his way out of it, but he knew it was no use. They hadn’t yet got search warrants, the Inspector said, but they would be taking Mr Payne along anyway. It would save them some trouble if he would care to show them—

  Mr Payne showed them. He gave them the jewels and the Santa Claus disguises. Then he sighed at the weakness of subordinates. “Somebody squealed, I suppose.”

  “Oh, no. I’m afraid the truth is you were a bit careless.”

  “I was careless.” Mr Payne was genuinely scandalized.

  “Yes. You were recognized.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Not at all. When you left Orbin’s and got out into the street, there was a bit of a mixup so that you had to wait. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, but I was completely disguised.”

  “Danny the shoeshine man knows you by name, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he couldn’t possibly have seen me.”

  “He didn’t need to. Danny can’t see any faces from his basement, as you know, but he did see something, and he came to tell us about it. He saw two pairs of legs, and the bottoms of some sort of red robes. And he saw the shoes. He recognized one pair of shoes, Mr Payne. Not those you’re wearing now, but that pair on the floor over there.”

  Mr Payne looked across the room at the black shoes—shoes so perfectly appropriate to the role of shabby little clerk that he had been playing, and at the decisive, fatally recognizable sharp cut made by the bicycle mudguard in the black leather.